I suppose I could have taken down Dr. Crankpot’s post from last week, but I’m leaving it up. I think it puts Crankpot’s deficiencies as a leader on display. He’s certainly technically competent, but he hardly shows the temperament of a leader of men, women, robots, and tendril creatures that live in our plumbing.

Shenanigans from the previously deceased former leaders of Technefarious aside, it’s time we implemented another project. Project Bucket Run will consist of two operations performed by Extraction Team C with Extraction Teams A and B serving as backup. Our goal is to steal the Bucket of Pure Water.

The bucket was an ancient attempt to develop a Philosopher Stone. Unlike a proper Philosopher Stone, it cannot create an elixir that extends the drinker’s life. Instead, any liquid poured into the bucket, no matter how foul, will turn into purified (i.e. distilled) water. Not the most earth-shattering power in the world, but it is uniquely suited to fit several of our ongoing needs. Distilled water is used extensively by the science department for chemistry and the occult department for alchemy. Those two departments also produce an impressive amount of hazardous waste that I would prefer to not just leave lying around. No sense in conquering the world if it is a giant dumpsite. Finally, we have at least one world-conquering project that involves an exceptional amount of distilled water, so having the Bucket of Pure Water would be useful that, too.

The bucket also turns lead into gold like a Philosopher Stone, but at a rate of one nugget a month, it’s easier to dig if you want gold that badly.

And yes, a Philosopher Stone does sound like it has the powers of a certain stone of sorcery. That would be because that’s what it actually was. It was rebranded in the American market, because philosopher didn’t sound actiony enough for the bloody Yanks.

There was a decent turnaround on our package exchange with the Golden Web this time. They just sent us a simple external hard drive with some sort of encrypted data on it. The computer department is trying to figure out exactly what is in there.

There was a decent turnaround on our package exchange with the Golden Web this time. They just sent us a simple external hard drive with some sort of encrypted data on it. The computer department is trying to figure out exactly what is in there.

HA! The Upstart thinks me incapable of tinkering with the computers of these modern times. As if the addition of pretty graphics and better interconnectivity pushed the structure of computer science beyond my ability to extrapolate the rules of the changes in the technology.

I, Dr. Crankpot, original founder of Technefarious wish to reclaim my proper role as its leader. Dr. Callaway, assuming he actually holds a PhD, is willing to kill to keep it. Such a crude man. However, the fact that he hasn’t killed me out of hand for demanding to be reinstated to my position means that I’m willing to let him stay with Technefarious after he’s been properly demoted. Never let it be said that I am not generous.

Let’s see. What else does he usually cover? Social activities – we’ve got some sort of sport event and some sort of craft show. Sounds like an enormous waste of time.

And on this week’s cafeteria menu – tacos? That’s some sort of foreigner food, isn’t it? When did that happen?

Elite, print this out for the ancient bastard so he can read it. CRANKPOT, YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE OF TECHNEFARIOUS. I killed my immediate predecessor to get the job. I’ve killed plenty of uppity henchmen to keep it. If you don’t believe me, let me remind you of the conversation we had to get you submit to testing. I haven’t lost any upper body strength in the past week, so I can dangle you out a window again if I need to.

Speaking of Dr. Crankpot, founder of Technefarious and pain in my ass, we’re still not sure why he is alive. I set Crankpot up with a lab and made Elite his assistant, but I also insisted he submit to every poke, prod, and pie-eating contest that the science and occult departments could think to put him through. Our current Crankpot is not a robot or a clone or a homunculus or an evil twin from another dimension or a good triplet from an alternate timeline. There are holes in his memory when compared to the historical record, especially concerning the final days of his life. Aside from that last bit, the memory distortion is perfectly normal for a human. The missing memories from those final days suggest that he may be time-jumped from shortly before he died. They also suggest that his body may have been resurrected or rebuilt from when he apparently died, and the damage from coming back cost him some memories. It is possible that that this is his original body, since his death was one of those lost in an explosion deals. We’re still working on it, but it looks like he might be himself, rather than some sort of trap by the Establishment.

Also missing from Crankpot’s memory is why he was in prison. No one of has any doubt that he deserved to be there. The question is what mix of courts and bureaucracy ended up with putting him in Bleach’s cell. The computer department is still trying to trace that information.

Until we have that history, Elite Triad will just have to keep Crankpot under control, or we may find out how well he bounces after a long fall from a window.

With everything that’s been going on, it’s been a while since I mentioned our ongoing war of nonsense packages with the Golden Web. The last thing they sent us was a box full of pirated superhero action figures from China. In retaliation for their shipment of excess lead and trademark infringements, I’m sending them half of a prop rifle from the Pilot Sunrise movies. It’s actual movie memorabilia, but only half of it survived an energetic encounter I had with Razor Lady. If my paramour Green Needle happens to be reading this, let me assure you that it happened long before we hooked up. For the rest of you, I’ll try to be more vigilant in keeping you up with these things. I mean the exchanges with the Golden Web, not my sexual activities. Those two things haven’t intersected yet.

In honor of our recovering Dr. Crankpot, the propaganda department is screening the classic documentary: Technefarious: Triumphs Through The Decades. It will be shown in Auditorium A on Wednesday night. Friday night is the annual Barbeque Blowout, so bring your families for an evening of food and fun. I’ll be cooking the hot dogs.

Have a good week, everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Right. Sorry about being gone for the past two week. It takes forever to get around when you’re the size of a molecule and flying the Brownian motion.

I should probably explain that. I was away on a mission to break Bleach out of jail. He was being kept in one of those SuperMaxed brand prisons set up to hold supervillains. Considering what they have to contain, they do a pretty good job keeping people in. None of them are perfect, though. After all, things have to be able to get into a prison everyday: guards, lawyers, new prisoners, food, supplies, air, light, gravity, quantum forces. Add in a world with superpowers, and you can see the kinds of problems they might have keeping things out.

Newer henchmen may wonder why Bleach didn’t kill himself and allow our soul catchers to extract him from his captivity. The answer to that is that we don’t want to encourage the Establishment to build something that will stop Technefarious souls from being caught by our equipment. They don’t have one yet, and I don’t see any point in putting them in a position of needing to accelerate their countermeasures.

The countermeasures they do have are enough to make a jailbreak interesting. They can’t use everything they have. For example, the K1 anti-teleportation field interferes with the EverSee anti-cloak field. It’s not anything dangerous, but it turns everything in the overlapping fields pink. Which countermeasures they use on their prisons is highly classified information that could only be uncovered by a massive intelligence operation orchestrated by a sophisticated long-term enterprise. Luckily, Technefarious is just that kind of organization.

This time, we decided getting small was the best way to break into the prison with all the stuff we were going to need to break out. So, our science department shrunk me and my equipment – wow, that sounds dirty now that I’ve typed it. They shrunk me and snuck me into the home of a member of the prison’s staff so I could hitch a ride on their clothes when they went to work. I won’t reveal which person unintentionally smuggled me into the prison, but I will say that the warden keeps a very tidy closet.

The frisking scans that everyone entering the prison is subjected to did not detect me. Between my microscopic nature and the cloaks we had on my equipment to hide their energy signatures, there wasn’t much that they could have picked up.

From there, I began my epic journey through the prison to locate Bleach’s cell. That sucked. I couldn’t move faster than the air around me. A power expenditure strong enough to get me anywhere in a reasonable amount of time would be detected by the passive energy scans that blanket the prison and trigger the alarms. I also didn’t know exactly where Bleach was being held in the facility. Technefarious hadn’t had a chance to hack that information yet, so I spend most of my time floating around, trying to locate him. Not fun.

Finally, I found him. They had him in the general population cells, which surprised me. Power drainers like Bleach aren’t the deadliest people in the world, but I still figured he’d have been placed somewhere in special security. He even had a cellmate in his cell. Those two bits of information are called foreshadowing.

I sent a signal to Technefarious to mobilize the rest of the operation, dropped the cloak off my equipment, and inflated myself back to full size (Here, I would like to apologize for not finding a way to make “mobilizing the rest of the operation” sound dirty, too). Alarms went off. Bleach and his cellmate were surprised. Suppression fields dropped down to stymie the launch of the equipment I brought for the rescue. Suppression fields we already knew about because they’re part of the prison’s countermeasures – countermeasures that have known interference problems. Known problems generated by the equipment I brought with me and triggered when I dropped the cloak. Now the cell was filled with a squeal that made my incisors shimmy, an inadvisable level of ozone, and a distortion that made my vision look like I was peering through a fish-eyed lens, but all the rest of the equipment I brought would still work.

I started to fill Bleach in on what the next few steps would be, but then he collapsed. They had placed him in the general population because they had jammed subdermal implants into him to keep him under control. With that future shadow behind me, the other tried to get my attention with a vigorous shake of my shoulders.

Here’s a tip, kids. When dealing with an armed supervillain occupied with busting his buddy out of jail, it’s probably best to try to avoid the appearance of attacking them in any way, shape, or form. It cost the cellmate the top of his left ear, mostly to keep him from bugging me again than any real concern I had about an attack from him. However, turning to look at him to make sure I didn’t stick him in the eye during the strike did mean I got to get a good look at his face.

He was Dr. Crankpot, founder of Technefarious and known to be dead for over three decades now.

At that point, he started screaming at me about who he was, how important he was, and how powerful his organization Technefarious was. I cut him off (verbally this time), informed that I had been in charge of Technefarious for years at this point, and that I did not answer to him. Then I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, squatted downed to pick up Bleach, activated my flight suit, and blasted my way through the walls of the prison.

Dodging bullets, heart-pounding action, blah blah blah. I flew away and met a Technefarious extraction team that had set up a couple miles away when I sent the signal at the start of the exciting part of the jailbreak. While our medical staff removed the tracers and other equipment jammed into our jailbirds, I coordinated the repulsion of the prison’s pursuit.

Then we all teleported home.

The End.

Oh, if you see Dr. Crankpot in the halls, he isn’t your boss, so you don’t have to do what he says. I’ve assigned the Elite Triad to keep an eye on him while we sort him out.

Have a good week, everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

The Elite Triad here, again. Presumably, Dr. Callaway is still working on rescuing Bleach. Despite the length of time he’s been away, we did a message from him that said, “Fucking Brownian Motion.” We take this as an indication that he is still working on the mission to rescue Bleach. It’s that, or a speck of dirt got in his glass of water.

Have a good week, everyone. The data indicates we will eventually rule the world – the issue is moving the timetable up to a period where other people are still living on it.